During the latter part of the nineteenth century, African American women
used the judicial system to redress racial discrimination and to define the
parameters of their newfound citizenship. Such resorts to legal solutions were
timely. To paraphrase novelist Charles Dickens's immortal words, the promise
of the best of times and the reality of the worst of times existed for African
Americans—both women and men—in the decades following the Civil War.
Promise of the best of times could be discerned from the ratification of three
post-Civil War constitutional amendments. By virtue of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments, African Americans gained emancipation,
citizenship, and the franchise for black men. However, Congress did not stop
with these vitally important amendments. It also passed a host of progressive
civil rights laws and created the Freedmen's Bureau. Such actions were intended
to assist blacks in the transition from slavery to freedom with all the rights and
privileges of citizenship.
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Unfortunately, the harsh reality of the worst of times frequently overshadowed the promise of the best of times. At least one historian has labeled the era
from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth
century as the nadir of the black experience in America. Promises of equality

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